Science

We developed our International GCSEs and A-levels together with leading UK universities to ensure that OxfordAQA students have the opportunity to achieve the knowledge expected to access further education. We want your students to start this journey early on. That’s why both our International GCSEs and A-levels adopt question styles that meet the demands of the best UK universities, with consistent language used for practicals and coherence in mathematical skills between International GCSE and A-level.

In addition, we have done what it takes to make sure our science qualifications are tailored to your needs:

• Practicals are at the heart of science, fostering students’ ability to reason scientifically. However, they can be challenging for schools outside the UK to set up when following a UK-based curriculum. That’s why our international science qualifications make practicals more accessible, so you can make them a key part of your teaching.
• For example, teachers can easily adapt experiments by using resources they have immediate access to, whilst ensuring students cover the same learning objectives as candidates in UK GCSEs and A-levels.
• Accessibility is a key feature of our exam papers. We leave out unnecessary words and context from our questions and we carefully format our papers to ensure we are testing students fairly. Find out more.

Taken together, when you choose OxfordAQA International GCSE, AS orA-level Science qualifications you can be sure you are preparing the scientists of the future with the skills they need for both the workplace and higher level study.

Practical work is at the heart of science and we expect students taking this course to have a rich diet of practical work. This will allow them to appreciate fully the practical nature of science and to understand the methods that scientists use to investigate the world around us.

As schools around the world have very different circumstances, particularly around access to practical equipment, there is no direct assessment of practical work for this qualification. This allows teachers to choose the best ways to introduce practical work to their students. It also allows meaningful discussion of practical work in a way that is separated from the artificial rigors of coursework or other exam board set assessments.

To be able to answer the questions on the papers for this specification, students must have had hands-on experience of the required practicals listed in the specifications. Questions may be set on these practicals directly, or on the skills contained within the practicals.

These skills could include, but are not limited to:

• Planning experiments, including identifying and understanding how to control variables
• Choosing equipment, or evaluating the use of specified pieces of equipment
• Skills required for carrying out experiments such as taking readings or recording data
• Choosing, constructing and interpreting appropriate graphical displays for data
• Analysing and interpreting data, including carrying out calculations on data
• Evaluating experimental procedures.

View the Fundamental Skills booklet: Practical Skills on the resources for teachers page for more information.